Second day Rosh Hashana. Most Jews I know spent Tuesday in synagogues reciting most of the same prayers they did the first day of the New Year’s holiday. Not our family.
Five years ago we decided that a walk through a park was a more intimate and visceral way to celebrate what Jews believe was God’s creation of the earth. It would be more meaningful for our grandchildren (Finley 9, Dagny 7, CJ 4 and Leo 2) and their parents.
We traveled to Ossining at 10:30 am to walk Teatown Lake Reservation’s wooded trail around a lake. The kids picked up acorns and interesting rocks. They observed the occasional caterpillar and turtle in the lake and saw what we assumed were thin tree trunks gnawed down by beaver.
When we stopped for a midway rest we discussed why communing with nature was an appropriate way to honor God’s work. One ritual of Rosh Hashana is a ceremonial casting away of one’s sins by tossing bread into water. As we were not supposed to give food to the wildlife, we instead cast stones into the lake.
At the conclusion of our simple but heartfelt ritual we blew shofar. The kids had plastic ones. Even two-year-old Leo made noise with his horn. I managed quite a few long blasts on our three foot long ram’s horn. I trumpeted several “shevarim,” bursts of three notes, but was windless when it came to “teru’ah,” the staccato nine note sequence. I did blare out a pretty good “teki’ah gedolah,” an extra long call of awakening to the faithful.
We returned home a little after 1 pm, the same time we would have had we attended services at our temple.